


but first they must catch you

by glitchesaintshit



Category: Slipknot (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Carnival, Crew as Family, Derogatory Language, Disability, Everybody's a little bit broken, Found Family, Friends to Lovers, Gen, How Many People Can Be A Nuisance At Once? The Answer May Shock You, Kissing, M/M, Male Friendship, Mostly Gen, Slice of Life, as Being Ignored to Smooching, but a little bit of, not so much, rating for language only lmao, they're absolutely foulmouthed, truly the definition of Just Guys Being Dudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:47:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23928625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitchesaintshit/pseuds/glitchesaintshit
Summary: It is a lovely day in the carnival and Corey Taylor is a terrible carnie.aka welcome to the literal circusaka the Slipknot traveling carnival AU nobody asked for
Relationships: Jim Root/Corey Taylor
Comments: 30
Kudos: 36





	but first they must catch you

**Author's Note:**

> i have no excuses and no explanations i amn just a littel creacher
> 
> so what happened was [this picture of corey](https://66.media.tumblr.com/a00f14899207993e5437b63b8d8dbd90/tumblr_p8pifnQjnb1uwdw8so1_1280.png) and [this picture of sid](https://66.media.tumblr.com/6cbf83032406ac5b184d56196a4522c3/d09785a8516f34cd-80/s640x960/4f3f15a3f7c757cb222eed811828d3bed3be1e22.jpg) came up on my dash in quick succession & what ELSE was i supposed to do with that except stop working on my quarantine fic immediately and slap out a whole-ass carnival AU, y'know???? you cannot tell me those do not have THE VIBES. like come ON. i was ATTACKED.
> 
> please enjoy this small sipp of extremely stupid juice, i truly just went fucking apeshitt and now it's this and if i could live in here i would
> 
> usually i'm just like "pick your era" but we all know that Vol 3 was P E A K greazy nasty trash men so that's what i'm imagining
> 
> huge thanks to marina for always putting me right & luke for being excited with me  
> title from Watership Down -- _"Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed."_

Season kickoff’s at Shawn’s place outside Sarasota like it always is, but Paul doesn’t want to bunk with Corey like he always does cuz last season they had “ _an incident_ ” which started with some routine public intoxication and ended with Paul throwing him bodily out of their bunk at six o’clock in the fuckin morning and Corey waking up nine hours later in the grass next to a trailer--but not underneath it--with wicked sunburn in the imprint of his arm across his face & after that Paul made Sid switch with him under threat of great bodily harm and they rode out the rest of the season that way, but now it’s _this_ season & Corey can’t believe Paul’s still mad about that dude, like, c’mon.

“Don’t make me bunk with Sid man, Sid _smells_ \--”

“You smell!” 

“We _all_ smell--”

“So then it’s not a fuckin’ issue if you bunk with Sid then,” Paul says with an air of finality, slinging his duffel bag up into the cabin marked “ _2_ ”, skipping the stairs to clamber up after it, and slamming the door in Corey’s face.

“Oh come _on_ , mother- _fucker_ \--!” Corey groans, hammering on the door with an open palm then smacking it with his own duffel for good measure. “ _Asshole!_ ”

“ _Fuck you!_ ” comes the muffled yell from the other side of the door.

“ _Fuck you first!!_ ” Corey shouts back and he can hear Paul laughing, trailer walls paper-thin. “Yeah, laugh it up sweet cheeks, I’ll get mine yet…”

He walks off muttering and walks the side of the trailer, peeking in open doors and seeing nothing but two sets of boots, two bags, two dudes already sitting on the fold-out steps passing bottles between them cuz they’re still on Shawn’s property which he’s declared a “ _dry event space_ ” in an attempt to keep everyone from getting shitfaced & not being able to unload out in Daytona tomorrow (which they all know is a joke at best & more of a symbolic gesture & just Shawn being Shawn, but) until he gets to the last door on the even-numbered side, what used to be 10 but has had the “1” methodically scraped off until there’s nothing left, just a weird stub and a 0. Sid’s sitting on the steps rolling a blunt, because Shawn failed to mention the wacky tobaccy in his “ _no getting fucked up tonight we got too much shit to do tomorrow_ ” speech so y’know, it’s not technically against the rules.

“Buddy!” he chirps, scooting over on the steps to let Corey past. “I see Paul’s still pissed at you--”

“Yeah, fuckin’ shut up,” he mumbles, throwing his bag over Sid’s head so it hits the side of the top bunk and bounces off before hitting the floor with a crash and earning a few quick slams on the shared wall from the guy behind them. 

“ _Hey, asshole!_ ” comes the muffled yell through the wall.

“ _Fuck you!_ ” Corey yells back, climbing into the tiny room over Sid’s knees to move his bag to the bottom bunk and flip Sid’s up top. “You’re up this time, alien boy, my knees are getting too fuckin bad to be doing that shit every night...”

“Nothing can stop me, I’m invincible,” Sid replies, cracking a grin that shows all the teeth he’s got left.

\--

There’s a new guy cuz there are always new guys, kids that decided to run off to join the circus & Shawn’s too big-hearted & desperate for cheap labor to say no even if they turn out to be useless & up and quit in the middle of Oklahoma sometimes. This new guy’s fuckin _tall_ though, wearing wrap-around sunglasses, his greasy hair pulled back in a ponytail with chunks falling out, too short to reach the elastic. Black bandana in his back pocket. Not a kid. Grown. 

“Check that shit out,” Corey says, nudging Mick with his foot, nodding in the new guy’s direction. They’re sitting on a rogue pool floatie somebody dragged out from Shawn’s actual backyard, out in the back forty under brutal Florida afternoon sun, waiting for the guy manning the grill to hurry the fuck up so they can eat and go back to loafing in the shadow of the ferris wheel all folded-up and trailerized. Sneak sips from the bottle tucked in the pocket of Corey’s cargo shorts, enjoy the last night of easy work before shit _really_ gets going. 

(Corey never takes time off cuz he’s a workaholic--everyone else tends to decamp back to fuck-knows-where-they-came-from when the season is over, but in the winter months he gets a shitty short-stay lease in a _business efficiencies_ building that he’s pretty sure used to be a motel--no, he’s _positive_ used to be a motel, and a crappy one at that--a few miles out from Shawn’s house, Uncle Fun Midway Entertainment Inc. ground zero, and helps with ride maintenance and off-season operations. Not for free, y’know, he does get paid, but it’s not a money thing. He just can’t stand to be not working.)

Mick grunts, something that could pass as a “ _yeah_ ” if you know him. Swats at a horsefly trying to land on his calf. Stares into the sun some more. 

Twenty feet away, Shawn’s wife Chantel--the cash manager & proverbial “ _even greater woman_ ” standing behind Shawn’s stupid ass & secretly the one responsible for keeping the whole operation from spinning out into total chaos year after year--approaches the new guy from the side and gently touches his elbow. She barely comes up to his shoulder, he’s so fuckin tall and Chantel isn’t short for a lady. She produces a clipboard out of nowhere with a pen dangling wildly from it and holds it so the new guy can see, snatching at the pen to go over whatever’s there to be gone over. New hire paperwork. Corey doesn’t fuckin remember, he did his like a hundred years ago. Who cares. The point is, the new guy leans a little closer to her to hear better, pushes his sunglasses up to the top of his head. Listens with his arms crossed, taking it all in. His face is smooth and open, sun-baked but not in a bad way. Corey’s got a good sense of reading people, y’know, it’s a side effect of almost eight years in the _amusements_ biz and this guy just seems--chill, y’know, fine. Probably not a raging meth head, and that’s good enough for him.

“Motherfucker’s _wall-eyed_ ,” Mick grunts before breaking into a hoarse laugh. “ _Jeeee-zus_ , dude…”

Corey can feel the back of his neck lighting up, flushing for the fact that y’know. He was staring at the cockeyed motherfucker. “Nah, c’mon, it’s not _that bad--_ ” 

“You have eight fingers--”

“ _Nine and a quarter!_ ”

“ _Jesus,_ ” Mick barks, fishing the bottle out of Corey’s pocket and turning his head away from Chantel’s direction to take a sip, capping it up and sliding it back where it belongs without so much as grimacing. “Like a _fish._ ”

“I’m gonna have that man’s babies,” Corey says matter-of-factly, digging around in his other pocket for his cigarettes then starting the long slow hunt for wherever he stashed his lighter.

“Ugly-ass kids,” Mick grunts, nodding at the field ahead of them, daring him to say anything else. He doesn’t, and Vanessa--single mom, real sweetheart, natural tits, un-schooling her two sons with a couple of the other families in camp--he fucked her in the space under one of the trailers last August back when his hair was still dyed black and he was running around looking like the Tommy Wiseau of the kiddie ride circuit--which he only got stuck on after _another_ “incident” that got him banished to Mini Dodgem duty for four consecutive weeks--ended up with grease mark kisses from the undercarriage on his back that took almost a whole pack of baby wipes to scrub off cuz the wimpy bunkhouse shower wasn’t cutting it--walks by so he gets distracted, hollering “ _hey baby--_ ” at her retreating ass and blowing her a kiss. 

“ _Fuck off, Corey,_ ” she singsongs back over her shoulder, throwing a middle finger behind her as she walks.

“Love you too, baby...”

Mick snorts and Corey can just tell he’s rolling his eyes behind his shades. “ _What?!_ ”

“Y’done?”

“What, so you can fuck her? No, thank you very much, I left my gum under the table for later _if ya know what I mean--_ "

Mick snorts again, swatting at the horsefly again and managing to smack it out of the air, crushing it under his massive boot. Chantel finishes up whatever business she had with the new guy, cuz he's staring at her back as she walks away and when his eyes slide over in Corey & Mick's direction guiltily yeah, there's something _a little_ bit off about him but he just slides his sunglasses back down and walks away, stalking off with purpose like a man looking for his lighter. 

“Knock yourself out. I like to aim higher than carnie pussy, _if ya know what I mean,_ ” Mick deadpans, reaching for Corey’s pocket again cuz he’s Mick, and his sheer bulk means he can just do these things and nobody can truly stop him.

“Higher than carnie pussy? That’s like what, tightrope pussy? _Trapeze_ pussy--”

“ _Fuck you--_ ”

They don’t have any circus acts on their production, they’re strictly a carnival. For the record. Corey kicks at Mick’s ankle and the cicadas scream in the trees.

\--

They’re three cities up the road when there’s a Ferris Wheel _Issue_ and it’s all hands on deck, the call going out over crew radio to drop your shit if you can and hustle over there. Corey was just taking a break on a milk crate in the de facto break spot under the Super Slide so he drops shit and does, indeed, hustle. When he gets there it’s utter chaos with Chris yelling, Shawn yelling, and everyone else trying to not get hit by shifting parts and pieces while also yelling their two cents cuz the motherfucker’s _jammed_ and it’s making a horrible noise. 

“JUST SHUT IT DOWN AND WIND IT BACK MANUALLY--” Corey offers at the top of his lungs only to get shouted back by Chris with a “IT DOESN’T _GO BACK_ MANUALLY, MOTHERFUCKER--”

Shawn’s rattling the keys in the control box, rubbing his dumb fucking clown hands on all the buttons and throwing switches he probably shouldn’t be touching cuz he hasn’t worked this ride in--well, since Corey’s been there, which. Is a long-ass time. 

“WHAT EVEN FUCKING HAPPENED?!” he yells over the din, wiping his face on the sleeve of his work shirt, leaving a face-shaped sweat print on the fabric. Gross. That man’s been running a one-man wet t-shirt contest as long as Corey’s been part of the show. 

“I DON’T _KNOW,_ I--”

“YOU BETTER GET THIS SHIT FIXED CHRIS OR IT’S YOUR FUCKING _BALLS,_ IT’S NOT _YOUR FAMILY_ YOU’RE FUCKING--”

“I KNOW CLOWN, SHUT THE FUCK _UP--_ ”

Shawn slaps at the control panel and with a deafening grinding metal-on-metal shriek and a series of clangs the motors all power down at once and then at least in the immediate vicinity, it’s eerily quiet. 

“ _Shit dude,_ ” Chris wheezes, dropping forward to brace his hands on his knees and breathe. Corey’s ears feel like they’re ringing and his chest is tight with the smell of burnt oil and machines going bad-wrong. 

“Fix the shit, we’re opening at seven,” Shawn says, wiping his face off on his sleeve again and stalking away like a prairie thunderstorm blowing off to fuck up the next town, already flipping the radio on his shoulder to the private channel and muttering shit to Chantel back in the office as he weaves between amusement tents and concession stands like a pirate captain on his way back to his quarters. Chris just looks wiped, all the color drained out of his face and his hair snarled where his ponytail flops out under his hard hat. 

“You good, dude? Need anything?”

“Like nine cigarettes and a gunshot to the face, _fuck,_ ” he groans and Corey just pats his hard hat, right over the _DEAR GOD, AIM HERE_ sticker. 

“I’ll get out of your hair then. Page me if you need anything,” he says, making a break for the shade of the Super Slide again before he’s inevitably gotta go help the midway guys dig the Rubbermaid tubs full of rubber ducks with little magnets in their heads for that stupid fish pond game out from the supply trailer. 

“Yeah, _thanks asshole--_ ”

“Any time, _your Royal Highness,_ ” he shoots back over his shoulder and when he looks back, Chris is talking on the radio and giving him the finger.

The new guy’s casually strolling up as he’s walking away cuz apparently they don’t teach people how to hustle in whatever bullshit cushy Before job he had. “Don’t bother, man, he’s got it under control,” Corey spits, literally spitting between his teeth at the rain-parched ground for emphasis. 

The new guy just grunts, swerving around him to head back off toward the concession stands. Asshole.

\--

Corey doesn’t actually think the new guy’s an asshole, not really y’know. He’s just _new,_ doesn’t get the way things operate around here. The hierarchy--who gets first dibs on the shower, breaks first, never has to give back cigarettes they’ve borrowed, etcetera. The rotation. The daily schedule, y’know, it has a lot of quirks like every production does. How much they pitch in for each other and there’s no formal “ _cross-zone training plan_ ” like the corporate-run megashow he used to work for, people just go where they’re needed and either pick it up or don’t. (But y’know. It’s not rocket surgery. Corey can _handle_ running a fucking free-throw game, alright. He just _prefers_ not to.) It just takes time to learn. Five cities in, maybe he’s finally starting to pick that up. 

Corey somehow ends up in line for crew dinner behind him, and if he truly wanted to be an asshole he’d bump him in line but he’s feeling generous or something. Also, despite having stared at him across the main drag, kitty-corner from Corey’s various positions on flat rides as he swaps back and forth between funnel cake duty and ring toss--which aren’t the absolute lowest on the totem pole but still, y’know, pretty not-choice (other people’ve talked to him, y’know, and word’s trickled back down to Corey that he’s _not_ the dumb rube they all thought he was--he just don’t talk much--but still. If he wasn’t green, would he really be on fucking _funnel cake_? Fuck funnel cake. Funnel cake sucks)--he’s still never spoken to the guy and y’know. No time like the now. 

“Hey, asshole--” he says, tapping the new guy on the shoulder and he whips around fast enough to almost launch his sunglasses off the top of his head; fast enough to startle Corey. He puts his hands up in defense like _whoa, whoa, it’s cool, it’s chill, I mean you no harm; easy, Killer,_ trying to communicate as much with his eyes. Last thing he needs is to spook the big lug and have him launch Corey over the fence with his freaky tall giant-strength or whatever. Dealing with tall people is like dealing with horses, and Corey fucking _hates_ horses.

The big fucker’s face relaxes a little bit and he folds his arms over his chest, biceps subtly flexing where his sleeves don’t cover. He’s got tattoos all the way down one arm and that’s the one he tucks under, away from Corey’s view. Corey pretends not to notice but y’know. He’s looking.

“Just wanted to introduce myself cuz y’know. I’ve been around here for a while. Corey Taylor. Ride jock. ‘S my eighth year here, I do off-season too.”

The new guy doesn’t make eye contact or even attempt to look him in the face, his gaze hovering somewhere down around the cracked print on Corey’s t-shirt. Before he even has the chance to collect that it feels like he’s talking to a brick wall--feels like he’s in some kind of Mexican stand-off--the new guy just grunts, something that sounds maybe like a “ _uh-huh_ ”, turns tail and walks off.

“ _Nice meeting you too, asshole!_ ” he yells at the dude’s retreating back, a V of sweat turning his shirt dark from the back of his neck to the dip of his spine where it puddles out. Maybe not so much a V as like, the shape of a really fancy bong. Y’know. Whatever. Fuck him if he wants to miss free dinner, y’know. Maybe he filled up on funnel cake, who fucking knows. He’s not Corey’s problem either way.

He finds out from Paul later that the guy’s name is Jim.

\--

City Eight, Corey’s eighth season, he sells some scrappier-than-usual locals fake Oxy and they come back the next night to fuck his shit up.

But y’know, he’s already given this shithole a total of three quarters of a finger (but spread across two digits, cuz the Lord apparently just had _plans_ for him) so he’s not giving it any more. He spends the night hiding in porta-potties, only popping back out for long enough to send another batch of kiddies through the Bizzy Bees then vanishing again until a line stacks up and one of Shawn’s kids comes on the radio demanding to know where the _fuck_ Corey is cuz they’ve got Karens ten deep out there with their sticky brats and if they don’t get to spin in circles inside a fiberglass bee the size of a two-door Volkswagen they’re gonna go _apeshit_ , and maybe this is why he keeps getting banished to kiddie rides instead of running the Giga Loop like he deserves.

Sid supports him though and offers to feed him batter-dipped twice-fried french fries through the mesh grates at the top of the port-a-john until he yells at him to go away before he tips off the locals to the fact that he’s hiding in there cuz Sid’s a known fellow drug dealer wearing a radio and _talking to a fucking shitter_ and then mercifully Sid fucks off and Corey goes back to faking strained bowel movements every time he hears someone approach the door.

After they shut down for the night and he’s throwing double-layered trash bags over the control panels of everything in anticipation of heavy rain Shawn comes and hunts him down and rips his ass in the middle of the empty midway for disappearing all goddamn shift but y’know, he didn’t get his ass beat & the clown’s bark is way worse than his bite. He’ll live.

\--

(Sid’s got an extra finger on each hand, tacked on after where a normal person’s pinky goes. They have fingernails and knuckle hair but no bones and he gets shitfaced & tries to con people into tying them together which _no dude that’s fucking gross_ , but one time Mick agrees to and they’re purple for a week after. 

Sid loses one or two more teeth every season due to stunts, stupidity, and forgetfulness and this year he’s down to twenty-two plus whatever shards and shrapnel are left in the mess that was his molars. One of them’s chipped so bad the inside’s turning black and somewhere around their twelfth city it starts smelling so bad Corey can smell it from his own bed before he even gets up in the morning and he’s begging Sid to _just please fucking deal with that dude Jesus fucking Christ_ but Sid doesn’t listen, just packs more of that fix-a-filling goo shit in it and says it’s fine before stepping out onto the steps to spark up his morning blunt and troll Plenty Of Fish for jacked local pussy cuz for Sid this is just business as usual. 

But shit gets so bad Corey rats him out to Chris and Chris eventually holds him down with a flashlight over a picnic table and declares “ _dude what the fuck you’ve got_ mouth gangrene, _bud_ ” and then y’know, it’s time to get that shit out of there. So when the sun comes up the next day Sid’s out on the steps of their bunk getting a tooth ripped out with a pair of pliers of questionable lineage then just packs it full of first aid kit gauze and goes on with business as usual, selling ditch weed to local teens behind the Hurler with bloody spit dripping off his chin & ignoring the chirps on the radio to get back to his fucking station because the people need to squirt water guns to make mechanical frogs race up a board so they can win their stupid Minions plushies. 

His face swells up like a water balloon and Corey gives him some _actual_ Oxy cuz he feels bad, and then when he’s too tilted that night to make it up the steps to their bunk him and Paul somehow drag him up and Corey forfeits the bottom bunk, cuz the last thing he wants is Sid needing to take a piss and either pissing directly in his bed and it _flowing downhill_ so to speak, or falling out of bed and breaking his face even worse in the process. They might be a bunch of assholes, but they take care of their own. 

Even if he gives Corey’s bed scabies--again--he still cares about the little shithead. They just show it different is all.)

\--

Jim’s not great at talking or looking at people who are talking. Jim’s a fucking mystery. 

Corey’s been keeping an eye on him from kitty-corner across the midway, floating from Funnel Cake to Ring Toss with an occasional jaunt over to Fried Oreos. The man knows how to work a fryer apparently, but beyond that he’s a fucking enigma. 

He does fine, y’know, talking to customers. Locals, townies, rubes, marks, pigeons, whatever you wanna call em. Hot Single Moms In Your Area. If a pretty girl comes up to the window he’s sure to treat her extra nice, flashing soft smiles and doing _something_ that always leaves them twirling their hair, walking away giggling & talking low to their friends like they’re in on some big conspiracy. 

“ _Ladies_ ,” Corey smiles, bowing a little as he offers up a freshly puke-free car on the Spider to the same groups of girls--girls that look like they could be at least Homecoming _court_ , y’know. Maybe not prom queen 10s but definitely a solid 7, y’know, like Barbie’s slightly-less-hot friends--and earning eyerolls and closed-mouth smiles and sardonic “ _thaaaanks_ ” that’s followed with the bad sort of giggles and whispering as soon as he latches the car closed and goes on to the next. 

“ _Maybe it’s cuz you have two naked chicks tattooed on your arms,_ ” Chris says later by the firepit they’ve got set up in the back corner of the field, burping up Mountain Dew Code Red mixed with what was probably straight fucking grain alcohol, cuz that’s what they get for letting Sid pour drinks. Fucking nasty. 

“ _Maybe it’s cuz you got eight fingers,_ ” Paul points out, y’know, in case he somehow forgot. 

“ _Asshole,_ ” Corey says, fumbling through his pockets for his lighter. “I don’t--y’know--I’m _ribbed for her pleasure,_ y’know, chicks fucking dig that--”

Paul laughs too loud and too long and Sid drapes himself over Corey’s back, wrapping his legs around him so there’s no possible hope of getting away. “ _‘S the pink hair_ ,” he breathes, all rot-mouth and booze-sweet, hot and sticky on the side of Corey’s face; covered in a permanent layer of lithium grease & parking lot dust. “ _Chicks...are gonna think…yer--_ ”

“ _Fuckin’ fruitcake,_ ” Paul laughs.

“ _Well,_ ” Corey says matter-of-fact as he comes up with his lighter, holding his hands out triumphantly before trying to light the cigarette in his mouth without catching Sid’s hair at the same time, which is trickier than it looks, but y’know. He manages. Takes a deep drag, shoves Sid off his back with a startled noise, and stares into the flames. 

\--

Jim’s there sometimes, after everything shuts down & the whole crew comes out of hiding a hundred strong to run an hour’s worth of clean-up and make the place look spotless for the next day’s batch of fresh marks. Spic-and-span, Shawn’s ruthless about that sort of shit. They can be fuck-ups all they want behind the scenes, but out where customers can see it? If they can’t keep their shit together like, _as people_ , at least they can have some clean facilities. They’ve never not passed a health & safety inspection--even with the occasional Ferris Wheel Incident--and Shawn fuckin brags about it to anyone who’ll listen. 

But then they filter out, disperse off into their separate cliques and twos and threes and what-have-yous to get drunk, get high, get fucked up, fuck, eat, talk, watch TV, shower, sleep--whatever the fuck they do after the lights all cut out, all the messy sweaty human shit that takes place in the spots in between the glow & the madness--and sometimes Jim’s there, always hovering at the edges & never looking directly at Corey or anyone. He watches the floor and fidgets with his hair a lot; stretches & fucks with the hair tie he keeps looped around his fingers when not in use. At the risk of sounding cliche, Corey’s still trying to figure him out. He considers himself pretty good at getting a read on people after how many years in the biz, but Jim’s a tough one. 

At first he thought he might be riding some voyeur head trip, like _oh let me watch you people then go back to my bunk & beat off about it later hur hurr_, like he’s some kind of anthropologist that gets turned on by studying alien species or something but then one night when they’re all a little toasty cuz it’s pay day and someone went on a Walmart run & came back with pounds and pounds of meat & potato salad & shit--ripe bananas one of the girls cut up and wrapped in foil packets with marshmallows & scatterings of chocolate chips & tucked in the tail end of the charcoal fire that came out twenty minutes later all molten & gooey for them to scoop out with graham crackers & plastic spoons & fingers & wash down with cheap Ice beer and it’s fucking _orgasmic_ \--they’re all a little buzzed, feeling good and Jim’s ducked off to the bushes that border the field the crew’s set up in with Sid & Chris a couple times, which y’know. No judgement here. And they’re all a little cozy, a little tilted in that feel-good comradery sort of way that makes carnies just wanna compare battle scars, so that’s what they’re doing. 

Corey always goes first, cuz his is the most obvious. Motherfucker’s only got eight fingers--well, _nine and a quarter_ , but y’know--and that’s something people notice. He loves to wave at kids and freak them all the way out. “Set my hand down and then y’know, _boom_ , picked my hand up and they were gone. They gave me the option of reattaching but then y’know, it was gonna be all this _money_ and there was the risk of complications and I’d probably have a bunch of surgeries and still end up losing em anyway, so y’know, fuck it. You can have em.” He tilts his beer at the sky as if he’s toasting god. “ _Thanks, bud._ ”

Everybody’s got one, the stories never get old and every year there’s always newcomers to impress. They’re like a group of old men that’s been going to the same fish camp together for thirty years--you never need new material when the entertainment is in how you tell it. It’s oral tradition, spinning stories by the fire--he’d never admit it, but it’s one of the things Corey loves about carnival life. Sure, they’re sweaty and dirty all the time and it’s hard hot dangerous work and there’s no escaping the smell of generators and man stank and engine oil, and it’s repetitive as shit but also no two days are the same, no two seasons are the same, and there’s always new people to bullshit. 

So Mick has a scar running almost the length of his whole calf from catching a piece of bare metal with an unprotected leg and now he wears long pants no matter how hot it gets, Chris had to have thirty-eight staples in the back of his head and ended up with a bald patch the size of a buffalo nickel lurking inside his ponytail after a run-in with the carousel on a previous show. Sid’s... _Sid,_ he’s got more scars and staples and stab wounds than any of them combined. Broke his shin once and it popped through the skin and he spent the rest of the season just laying in his bunk or on a deck chair fuckin _twisted_ on pain pills, not working but also not starving either cuz Shawn likes him for some reason & wanted to keep him around. Then Paul broke both collarbones being a dumbass during a tear-down and now he has a permanent dent of scar tissue gone shiny in the middle underneath the mangled lump that passes for the right one nowadays. 

Craig actually stepped on a landmine when he was in the Marines but they somehow managed to save his foot, even if the rest of his leg looks like swiss cheese crudely spackled over with mayonnaise and pigskin. He never wears shorts either.

(That’s all he says, actually. “ _Landmine._ ” Waits for the shocked stares, rolls his pant leg back down.

When the newbies suck breath in through their teeth and make noises that sound like “ _no way_ ” and “ _you’re bullshitting_ ” like they do every year, a fresh batch of rubes to impress, the rest of them have to step up to fill in the blanks cuz Craig doesn’t talk. He’s more the silent observer, serial killer type. Which is fine, everybody’s got their thing. 

But Craig’s not bullshitting cuz he never is, and Corey’s been around so long he’s seen the pictures from his time served with his own two eyes. Even if he hadn’t, he knows the dude has _integrity_. That’s just the kind of guy Craig is.)

And Jim says “ _Check this out,_ ” which is probably the most words he’s spoke at once all night and y’know. He has their attention. At least Corey’s anyway, and everyone else’s eyes turn to meet him too cuz they’re feeling that loose relaxed sort of comradery and now it’s Jim’s turn to have the floor. Re-observing Craig’s stanky mayo leg can wait.

He rolls up the sleeves of his dusty flannel shirt to better show off hands forever stained with ride grease, criss-crossed with nicks and lines. “ _Sheet metal,_ ” he says, pointing to a deep raised scar off the side of his palm. “ _Oil. Oil. Barbed wire._ ” He’s got tattoos on the inside of his left wrist, a cartoon pin-up girl holding a knife and an Eye of Horus. Corey leans a little closer by the firelight and mercury lamps overhead, looking directly at it.

“You can’t really see it anymore cuz I tattooed over it, but I got this huge engine burn a few years ago and like, half my skin melted off?” he says softly, showing the back of his forearm to the group. Under the tribal and chunks of rainbows and his surname--ROOT in graffiti style block letters, which Corey only knows is his surname from lingering over Chantel’s shoulder when he dropped into her office to submit a vendor invoice for some parts he had to order ( _come for the appropriate financial reporting, stay for the opportunity to spy on the Christian names of all the fuck-ups you work with_ )--the skin is bubbled, textured, a little too dark. Mottled like an orange peel. 

“Bet _that one_ fuckin’ hurt,” Mick says with a clipped laugh, leaning back into his folding chair and reaching over to grab another beer out of the cooler. It’s only 2 AM, there’s still plenty of drinking time left. 

Jim grunts and it’s either something like “ _yeah_ ” or “ _no shit_ ” but functionally they mean the same thing, so y’know. 

“ _‘S this too,_ ” he mumbles, dipping his head down for a second and then his _fucking eyeball is in his hand_ and he’s looking back up at them with a lopsided smirk on his face, hair falling over his eyes. It would almost count as eye contact if they weren’t too stunned to look at anything other than the one he’s currently holding in his palm, green iris staring up at them, pupil fixed steady in the dim light.

And all of them say more or less at the same time, “ _holy shit._ ”

And Sid says “ _what the fuck_ ” cuz they were all thinking it but Sid just doesn’t _do_ stuff like decorum or _asking_ or waiting his turn. And then “ _dude,_ ” cuz yeah, they were all thinking it.

“Used to work construction ‘n y’know, sawblade exploded? Had some nerve damage. Lost the eye.”

And Chris says “ _bud--_ ” and Paul says “ _fuck_ ” and Jim just grunts, grabbing a water bottle off the picnic table and rinsing it off, while everyone with half a lick of sense looks away but Corey just stares. Jim ducks his head again, turning away a little and then when he’s looking back up at them he’s got two eyes again. A little bit cockeyed like he always is, his smile a little bit softer on one side. 

“ _Jeeeez-us,_ ” Corey breathes. 

Jim shrugs, wiping his hands on his thighs and standing up, heading for the treeline again without announcement or fanfare or the whole fuckin’ _entourage_ , barely glancing back over his shoulder at Corey with a look he just can’t read.

\--

If you put Corey & Sid together then averaged em out, you’d have a guy with ten fingers but still no brain cells. He says this while crouched in the center of the half-dismantled swing ride, “helping” Chris with a repair which mostly means handing him tools and being there in the event shit were to go horribly wrong, cuz he has no brain-to-mouth filter and the thought just came through his head.

“ _Math doesn’t track,_ ” Chris points out, cuz he spent three seasons on games before moving to rides and still thinks math is fun. “ _Be two guys, no brain cells, just ten fingers--_ ”

“ _Shut up,_ ” Corey says, throwing a dirty rag at him.

\--

Somewhere in Oklahoma Paul’s new-guy bunkmate quits. Well-- _vanishes_ is more right, doesn’t even put in notice--just walks off in the middle of the night & instead of risking getting stuck with another new guy that’s even worse than the last one Paul lets Corey move back in. 

Sid’s bummed, but Corey’s happy to be able to get a decent night’s sleep without having to listen to the beeps and boops and scratching static of alien boy trying to talk to the mothership on a short-wave radio. 

\--

Few cities later Jim’s made it to the frog flip game, sitting on the edge of the booth with his long legs dangling. He’s shitty at barking, Corey’s noticed--doesn’t really do much to drum up actual players, they just sorta _appear_ and once they’re there he just goads them and harasses them and sometimes openly makes fun of them to their face until he ends up with all their money. It’s a very effective system, somehow. Corey’s impressed.

If somebody’s being truly insufferable Jim likes to pop his eye out while their back is turned or they’re distracted by the game (just a practiced flick of his fingers behind his sunglasses like he’s picking sleep out) then drop his shades to the end of his nose, leering down at them with a sick smirk and an empty socket. He’s seen grown men startle so hard they nearly piss themselves & jerk their kids away from the booth by the arm, pulling a total 180 while Jim laughs “ _yeah, that’s right…!_ ” at their retreating backs. 

Corey’s impressed.

\--

They got a dunk tank and an ongoing contest on who can pull the most down in a four-hour shift. The water tends to get pretty manky by the end of the night but it still feels great on hot days. 

Shawn always likes to brag about his skills in “ _welding, sculptural art, and fabrication_ ” and the dunk tank is his fuckin’ pride and joy. He’s rebranded it as “ _DUNK THE PUNK_ ”--instead of chain link safety fence and colorful vinyl like the one at Corey’s first production, it’s basically an old-timey prison cell with a tank in the bottom. It looks like a tetanus infection waiting to happen with spraypainted graffiti-style signs (the target’s a dripping red bullseye painted on a skull with its eyeballs rolled back in its head, blood pouring out of its mouth) & a shift on it means sitting in there baking under the sun for four hours in your underwear or “ _carnie finest_ ”, in Shawn’s words, heckling passerby & being as rude as possible. 

And _hell yes_ , they make _so much money_ in the Bible Belt. 

They all have their tactics. When it’s Corey’s turn he likes to put his hair in pigtails, wear a white tank top & tighty-whities; sit there behind his sunglasses pretending to jerk off & catcalling every pretty girl that walks past & even some of the ugly ones. He gets lots of enraged boyfriends stepping up to try to defend _their woman’s honor_ which makes for higher takes--the more elaborate the sexual fantasy he can spin about some other dude’s girlfriend while he sits there with his undies & pigtails & wet shirt sticking to his visibly pierced nipples, licking his lips & leaning forward in the cage to grab the bars & proposition her directly, the more money the boyfriend’s willing to dump from his wallet into the attendant’s hands to fight him the only way he can reach--with a stupid little ball, thrown at a target shaped like a skull so Corey gets a little wet. _Boo-fuckity-hoo._

He’s gotten more than a few phone numbers that way, passed through the cage on Sharpie’d scraps of paper, and one time when his shift ended he sent the “ _put out or get out_ ” text to some local with natural blonde hair and tasteful face-framing layers, y’know, which looked fantastic wrapped in his fist while he fucked her over a palette of corndog mix in an empty supply trailer before turning her loose to meet back up with her meathead boyfriend, a smear of Corey’s jizz on the back of her denim miniskirt. He doesn’t remember her name, but y’know. She’s in his phone as _Cornhole_ forever. 

\--

(Shawn actually holds the record for most dollars earned in a dunk tank shift--so many dollars that if Corey hadn’t been there, he’d assume he’d cheated & done an all-day shift instead of the four-hour standard everyone else is playing to but unfortunately it’s _real_ and it’s all true.

He’s got this clown mask and he just sits in there with it on--shirtless & sweaty, rubbing his belly with his grubby clown hands and insulting bystanders _to the core of their very soul._ One time he got a guy so bad the dude reached through the bars and tried to hold his head under the water until his son Gage yanked him off & fucking clocked him & kicked him out then tried to convince Shawn to go to the hospital cuz his face got smashed up on the edge of the tank real bad but y’know. He didn’t. He just sat there for another two hours, bleeding on himself & cackling cuz he’s _fucking insane,_ and it’s his show & he can do whatever he wants.

He didn’t make much money after that but _god_ it was amazing. Even if they had to drain the tank and start again fresh cuz nobody wanted to risk sharing Shawn’s hepatitis water.)

(Mick says carnivals are basically just trailer parks with rides & cotton candy--and y’know, they’ve all lived in plenty of trailer parks. The locals tend to treat them with the same sort of disdain & fear the rich kids at school always had for Corey & his family growing up, and that’s even back when he had ten fingers. So. The dunk tank is their time to be on their worst behavior, act _exactly the way everybody expects them to._ That’s why Corey likes it. They can go back to being nice to each other-- _themselves, the gang,_ not the townie asshole outsiders--and goofing off around a firepit sharing stories, dinner, beers & drugs later. While you’re up there in the cage waiting for some local jock to drop the platform out from under your ass and soak you, that’s the bad side of you. It’s freeing in a way. But they could never be like that all the time.)

(Except for Mick, maybe. When it’s his turn he sits in there and _stares,_ calling every guy that walks past a faggot until somebody gets so hulked out on closeted homo rage that he throws down the cash for a whole bucket of balls and soaks his ass. And Mick just _laughs_ \--climbs back up laughing fuckin _maniacally_ and asks “ _if that’s all you pussy-bitches got_ ”, eyes wide and blue and burning with rage behind the bars and it’s a good thing there’s the cage sometimes, y’know, not so much to keep the locals _out_ but to keep Mick _in_.)

\--

(Jim’s never been in the cage. Every time somebody tells him it’s his rotation he comes up with a genius reason not to do it or fuckin _vanishes_ and then they don’t find him again til the end of the night when it’s time to sweep up and suddenly he’s there again, hosing down the asphalt in front of the funnel cake stand with a cigarette in his hand. 

“ _What, Big Jim’s still scared of getting wet?_ ” Corey teases when they pass each other after one of his own turns, barefoot with a beach towel wrapped around his waist to keep from flashing the whole midway the ol’ frank & beans. 

“Obviously not, you saw me leaving your mom’s trailer last night.”

“ _Oh fuck youuuuuuu--_ ”

Jim just smirks, never breaking stride despite the fifty-pound sack of sugar on his shoulder. 

“We’ll get you in there yet! You can’t hide from it forever, James!” Corey yells at his back.

“ _Yeah, love to see you try,_ ” Jim yells back without even turning to look.

Corey stretches out in the field where the bunkhouses are parked in the flickering shade under a tree and suns himself like a fucking lizard until he dries back out, staring up at the leaves & birds & sky & thinking about everything & nothing--daydreaming--until his radio squawks that it’s shift change, which means he’s gotta go work night shift on G-Force.)

\--

It is a lovely day in the carnival and Corey Taylor is a terrible carnie, cuz he’s got an acoustic guitar and that’s everybody else’s problem. 

He doesn’t have to work until tear-down but he’s probably the only one, so the top-of-his-lungs Misfits covers don’t have the _impact_ in the crew area he was hoping for. He could sit on a lawn chair back here all day smoking cigarettes & belting out the hits to an audience of zero or _take this show on the road_ so to speak, and the choice is obvious. He might con some tips out of it too. 

He feels like the Pied Piper of Bullshit when he rolls up on the midway shirtless & barefoot to park himself between the Frog Fling & the kettle corn stand & people look at him--stop to watch, doing the only Grateful Dead song he likes and some Journey & Steely Dan & “Born to Run”, all that dad-rock family friendly bullshit that sounds fine acoustic despite his literal handicap--and drop dollars into the plastic souvenir boot-mug (which he stole from the beer tent on the way out) at his feet, but y’know. That’s well and good and all, but as good as general approval resulting in cash money is--sometimes, he’d rather just... _not_. 

He makes sure to empty the tip cup into his pockets and kick it under the booth next door to dispose of the evidence before entering what he likes to call _Full Motherfucker Mode_. Patent pending. 

“ _Well I’ve been to Hastings and I’ve been to Brighton, I’ve been to Eastborne too--so what? So what?_ ”

A little trickle of people starts to gather again because he’s playing. _Fantastic._

“I’ve been here, I’ve been there--I’ve been every fucking where--so what? So what, _so what--you boring old cunt?_ ”

A couple adults look up from trying to squint at their phones in the St. Louis sun, looking between each other like they’re trying to figure out what he just said without the courtesy of real life having a rewind feature. But the chorus is clean-- _who cares, who cares what you do? Who cares, who cares about you? You, you you you_ \--so they look away cuz surely, nobody would be playing a song like that on the midway in broad daylight, this is a _family entertainment venue._

“Well I’ve fucked queens, and I’ve smoked rock, I’ve even sucked an old man’s cock-- _so what? So what?_ ”

The adults are definitely looking now. The kid working kettle corn sticks his head out of the window and pulls his phone out.

“I’ll fuck a sheep, I’ll fuck a goat, I’ll ram my cock right down its throat--so what? _So what, so what, you spineless little fuck?_ ”

The kid working kettle corn looks annoyed that the chorus is clean cuz his phone’s _out,_ he’s _ready and waiting._

“Been covered in puke and covered in piss, I’ve jacked off on a fat girl’s tits-- _so what, so what?_ ”

A mom pulls her kids away by the arm and their heads swivel to keep looking like they’re little owls and Corey’s a mouse they were gonna eat, sno-cones melting purple down the front of their shirts. 

“I’ve done meth, and I’ve done speed, I’ll fuck your ass until it bleeds-- _so what? So what, so what--you miserable cunt?_ ”

On the clean chorus Shawn appears out of nowhere, sweating through his work shirt and putting his body between Corey and the fairgoing public. He just keeps strumming because _who cares, who cares about you--you, you you you._

“ _Corey--_ ”

“Hi Shawn.”

Shawn sighs, rubbing his beard then wiping his sweaty-ass face off on his sleeve as is his habit. “Party’s over man, you gotta clear out--”

“I’m _adding value_ to your midway _entertainment_ experience--”

“You’re not on the clock, _get--_ ”

“Just let me play! Jesus christ, man, I don’t get to do _anything_ around here, come _on_ \--I’ve been with you for _eight years, man,_ the least you could let me do is--”

“ _You can, just not out here!_ ”

“I’m sorry, _I can’t hear youuuuuuuu,_ ” Corey sings, stepping around Shawn to walk down the midway for a _truly mobile entertainment experience,_ y’know, to _delight the masses_ with his _acoustic stylings._

“ _WELLLLLLLLLL I’ve had crabs, and I’ve had lice, I’ve lost limbs and that ain’t nice--so what, so what?_ ”

“ _Corey!_ ” Shawn yells, two steps behind him. Corey’s not sure how far this is gonna go before somebody jumps out from a booth and tackles him and shears off both his kneecaps, but he’s got a hundred verses for this song lined up. He’s been _practicing._ It’s so easy, it’s like 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall shit. A _baby_ could do it. He could go forever, as long as the clown doesn’t catch him. He simply has no choice but to double down on the bit--strum harder, sing louder, and hope Shawn doesn’t take him out with a flying slide tackle on hot asphalt.

“ _I fucked this, and I fucked that, I blew my load in Clown’s wife’s twat--so what? So what, so what, you soggy old fuck?_ ”

“ _COREY--!_ ”

“I CAN’T HEAR YOU SHAWN I’M NOT LISTENING-- _who cares, who cares what you do? Who cares, who cares about you--you, you you you you you--_ ”

He left his radio in his bunk but he can hear everyone else’s crackle to life at once, the telltale chirp and weird sonic disconnect of hearing what someone is saying behind you as it’s coming out of the radios cuz they’re too close to you. The asphalt is hot under his feet. “ _Anybody capable of taking down Corey Taylor, can I get_ anybody _capable of taking down Corey Taylor--I’ll_ pay _you--_ ”

“ _Fuck you, old man!_ I eat ass, and I sell weed, I get tied up and sexually beat-- _so what, so what?_ ”

Jim’s voice comes crackling out over the radio. “ _Short Corey?_ ” 

“ _Yeah, that one--_ ”

“ _I’ll fuck your mom, and I’ll fuck you, slit your dad’s throat and fuck him too--so what? So what, so what, you boring old cunt? Who cares--who cares what you do? Who cares, who cares about you? You, you, you you--_ ”

“ _I’m on it,_ ” Jim says on the radio. 

“ _Shawn, please,_ ” Corey says, still running through the same three chords like his life depends on it. “You’re being ridiculous. _Everybody_ is having a good time right now--”

(The horrified looks from the families circled around them would say otherwise, but he’s _committed._ But they’re also not looking away either. People just don’t always appreciate _art_ right away y’know? Sometimes it takes a minute.)

“Well maybe not everybody but y’know. You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, man, and lemme tell ya, this is gonna be a _hell_ of an omelette--the _Rolls Royce_ of omelettes. People’re gonna be coming to us for omelettes for _years--_ ”

The rest of the bullshit he’s spewing never makes it out of his mouth because suddenly his gravitational field is being altered & he’s falling then spinning back up like he’s on the Black Widow without a harness, Jim jumping a portable fence to hit him with a body-check and grab him by the pants before he hits the ground, flipping him over his shoulder fireman-style before he can realize what’s going on.

“ _HEY, MOTHERFUCKER--_ ”

“Shut up,” Shawn spits, peeling what looks like a twenty off the wad in his pocket and passing it to Jim while Corey struggles against his grip, ass over teakettle with all the blood rushing to his head.

“ _You’re annoying, y’know?_ ” Jim says, starting to walk away with Corey’s guitar dragging behind them. 

“Yeah, you’re no fuckin’ prize either--big idiot motherfucker, I swear to god--”

“ _What’re ya gonna do, hit me?_ ”

“ _Maybe,_ ” Corey snaps, watching the midway go by upside down and backwards from the ride over Jim’s shoulder. “Asshole.”

Jim lets out a clipped laugh, patting Corey’s thigh. He veers off from the main drag and keeps walking until they reach the grass, the edge of the field the bunks and trailers are set up in and he sets Corey down gently, touching his shoulder firmly to stabilize him as all his blood returns to its rightful places. It feels weird, being barefoot next to somebody he’s always wearing shoes around. Too short. Jim’s too fuckin big. His hands are big. 

“Thanks, I guess,” he says, not knowing what else to say. “ _Thanks for the ride_ ” would be weird.

Jim just grunts in a way that could be “ _yeah_ ” or “ _no problem_ ” or “ _any time_ ”, which all mean the same thing in this case anyway so it doesn’t really matter. “ _Cakes ain’t gonna funnel themself,_ ” he says with his actual voice as he walks away, ghost of a lopsided smirk on his face. 

Corey stands in the grass and watches him go before dragging back to the bunkhouse to sit in the shade on the odd side of the trailer & serenade people when they roll in off shift change.

\--

Jim’s got a guitar too--a few of them do. Corey and Paul jam together sometimes for fun, and Paul & Jim have played together exactly once but Jim’s more of a solitary creature, harder to come out of his shell, so it was just the one time & Paul hasn’t pressed it again even though Jim’s _really fuckin’ good,_ or at least that’s what he told Corey after. 

They’re rained out--they’re somewhere in the Great Plains and it’s a fucking monsoon outside, rain pouring straight down in sheets that hurt to get between. They’re supposed to be sheltering in place in case of tornadoes, but there’s twenty dudes stuffed in a barely-converted box trailer--what the fuck are they gonna do in a tornado, _hold on?_ Carnivals are just trailer parks with cotton candy. If a tornado’s coming, they’re fucked. 

But Corey’s gone eight seasons on this production without any tornadoes and as long as the rain holds there won’t be a tornado, so he’s grateful for the rain. It’s coming straight down in such a way that everyone’s got their doors open for ventilation still; smoking cigarettes, smoking pot, darting between doorways in flip-flops to catch what games people are watching or see if the NASCAR race is off rain delay yet or just hang out with their buddies in another bunk. These are the times Corey loves about being a carnie--the sense of _community_. His belly’s full of dinner the crew line cooked up in the barbecue tent with all the side flaps closed and delivered to the bunkhouses (in styrofoam containers, six to a milk crate) huddled under umbrellas threatening to fold from the sheer power of the rain. Ribs there’s nobody around to buy, mac and cheese nobody’s around to deep fry, griddled potatoes, greens. Those individually wrapped mini cornbread loaves and Oreos nicked from the supply truck. BYO refreshing beverages. It’s stressful, it’s loud, it’s smelly, it’s tiring, it’s hot & dirty & a lot of hard work, but god _damn_ if nights like these he doesn’t love these people, love this place. 

He coulda quit a long time ago, y’know, but he didn’t. He’s stuck it out longer than any other decision he’s ever made for himself. 

When he’s hovering in the door to smoke he can hear someone playing guitar from next door in #4. Paul’s up in the top bunk watching some shitty movie on the shared TV so after Corey finishes his cigarette he grabs his own guitar and bails out into the rain, getting soaked to the skin in the six feet between the doorways and finding Jim sitting on the bottom bunk with his own acoustic when he rolls in, fan on and cigarette burning. 

“What happened to your roommate?” 

Jim shrugs, not looking up from what he’s playing, something Corey can’t place. “ _Something about football,_ ” he mumbles.

“Probably down at Mick’s then.”

Jim just shrugs again but it’s not a direct “ _fuck off_ ” so Corey takes that as a yes, leaning against the wall across from Jim and strumming a couple chords. His legs are so long their knees are still practically touching. 

And Jim says “ _you can sit_ ” but mumbled is probably the more accurate word, cuz Corey can barely hear him over the rain and the music he’s making. And sure, yeah. Corey sits next to him and he scoots over to make room, glancing up at him just out of his good eye. It’s sort of like looking at a rare bird in the bunkhouse and Corey doesn’t want to spook him so he looks away. 

“ _Alice in Chains_?” Jim says, more of a question than a statement.

“ _Sure,_ ” Corey breathes. “Angry Chair?”

“No Excuses?”

“ _Sure, yeah,_ ” he says softly, waiting for Jim to lead it in then catching up but grabbing lead vocals, cuz Jim doesn’t talk much, y’know. He might be a singer, but probably not--that’s not even Corey being good at reading people, that’s just _common sense._

So when he comes in with a harmony on “ _no excuses that I know--_ ”, voice raspy and golden sweet, Corey’s fingers stumble on the strings. And when he glances up in shock Jim’s looking right at him, the smallest hint of a smirk on his face; rain pounding down outside.

\--

“ _Hey asshole, gimme a Diet Coke,_ ” Corey says, standing up on his toes to peek in the high window of the funnel cake stand. They’re somewhere on the plains still and the sun is brutal overhead, cooking Corey like a lizard on the parking lot they’re set up on while he works the giant swings. Meanwhile Jim’s all cozy up in his stupid funnel cake stand, leaning against the counter scrolling on his phone like he doesn’t have a care in the world. He doesn’t even look up. He’s got a _fan_ blowing on him. Cushy-ass prick.

“ _Fuck you,_ ” he grunts, scratching the side of his nose with his middle finger either accidentally or on purpose, but probably mostly on purpose even in the face of Corey’s obvious distress. Asshole. 

“Oh come _onnnnnnn,_ ” Corey groans, slapping the narrow counter that’s somewhere up around nipple height on him, resting his head on his arms and staring in at Jim with even more intent. “I’m dying. James. Please. I’m baking to death out here. Gimme a pop. I need _ice._ ”

“ _Cold’ll make it worse,_ ” Jim mumbles, squinting at whatever’s on his phone. “Contrast, y’know?”

“ _It will not_ \--for fuck’s sake--”

Corey decides to take matters into his own horrible sweaty hands, slapping the counter again then sliding around to the back of the trailer where Jim’s got the door propped open with a cinderblock to catch as much cross-breeze as possible, despite having nice big windows on three sides _and_ a fan. Fucking princess. Horrible. The rest of them are out here _frying,_ and Jim’s not even _breaking a sweat_. The _audacity_ of this motherfucker.

“ _Jim, I swear to fucking god_ \--I’ll give you weed, dude,” Corey says, sticking his head in the door before just letting himself up cuz fuck it, he’s already in dereliction of duty, what’s a little more gonna hurt. “I left my wallet in the trailer, man, I don’t have any cash right now--”

“ _Nobody paid you to ride?_ ”

“ _No, Jesus_ \--everybody’s been on their _best fuckin’ behavior_ today, it’s all tickets. Fuckin’ awful, man. I’m dying out there. Shit sucks.”

Jim just grunts, shrugs, slides his phone into his pocket and crosses his arms on his chest; pointedly staring out the window that Corey just came from and not looking at where he’s now hovering in the door. 

Corey just watches him for a minute--the set of his jaw, the way his jeans hang off his hips and how his shirt clings just a little to his sides cuz it’s a hundred fucking degrees out and there’s no way it couldn’t. The flex of his biceps where his sleeves end. The intentional sort of way his hair falls into his face just enough to obscure that there might be something wrong, but y’know. Corey doesn’t see that as a _flaw._ It’s just quirks. Like stretch marks. Battle scars.

Jim picks at his fingernails--middle finger to thumb, thumb to middle finger, middle finger to index finger, thumb to index finger--little twitches because in all the hours Corey’s spent trying to figure him this season, he’s never stopped moving. It’s July and he’s still never stopped moving, even if it’s just subtle like this. Blink and you’d miss it. 

“ _Y’know, I’d suck your dick,_ ” Corey says quietly, mouth-brain filter at typical capacity. Jim stops picking his fingernails. 

“‘M not gay.”

“Me either.”

It’s quiet except for the subtle hums of the equipment--pop machine, fryers, refrigerator, generator, Jim’s own personal wind machine. Happy screams and laughter from the rides a stone’s throw away, blinking light noises, gamerunners yelling. Bells, whistles, talking and laughing; that lilting megaphone voice everybody gets from running the same spiel 300 times a day, day in and day out. Fryers sizzling, grills sizzling, timers going off, supervisors yelling orders to expedite. Radios beep-crackling, more generators, industrial strength blowers for the inflatables, rattles & banging from coolers & games & rides & people catching air on the Super Slide. Calliope and classic rock. Just breathing. Carnival quiet.

“Suck your dick for a fuckin’ _pop_ right now though--”

“ _Oh, shuttup--_ ” Jim groans, laughing a little and throwing an open box of gloves at Corey’s face, missing terribly. It bounces off the door frame and flops onto the floor.

“ _That’s_ a health code violation--” he jokes and suddenly Jim’s in the doorway too, leaning down to match Corey’s height with almost a foot between them already and more still where he’s standing on the metal steps out the back of the trailer, not on even ground at all. 

And then they’re kissing. Jim’s kissing him. His hand is in Corey’s hair and he’s kissing him and his mouth is soft in ways Corey wasn’t ready for and tender in ways he’d never expect and he just makes a little noise against Jim’s mouth cuz _whoah dude_. Cuz this is not what he expected when he came over to try to get a free drink, y’know. 

And it’s desperate--they’re kissing like they’re fucking dying or the boss is gonna rock up at any second cuz there’s a possibility he _is_ , y’know, they’re in the middle of a fucking _carnival_ in what amounts to a _big glass box_ & Corey’s not even all the way in it, he’s only halfway in the back door, and Jim’s a _fucking great kisser_ & his fingers tighten in Corey’s hair for _just_ a second, just long enough to catch the whine in his throat when somebody’s Ringing Bell For Service and Jim’s pulling away like it’s no big fucking deal, turning back to the window Corey came from like “ _Yeah?_ ” as he wipes his whole mouth off on his hand in the most graceless way possible then wipes his hand on his pants. Then starts making funnel cakes with no fucking gloves--two chocolate, one strawberry.

Corey smokes a cigarette before he goes back to the swings cuz his post is already good and fucking abandoned, squinting up into the prairie sun.

\--

Somehow, Sid gets mono so of course half the show has it by Topeka.

**THE END**


End file.
